One Sure Way to Kill a B2B Website Conversion

Recently I was helping a client  launch a test campaign for their B2B technology company.  The head term clicks are surely to be at least $10.00 and probably more like $20 or $30.

As I’m helping them come up with ad copy and mock up some landing pages, I’m feeling pretty confident that we’ll have a good shot of catching a few good sales opportunities for the buck with some pretty decent bait they’ve come up with.

About the time we’re ready to launch, my client sent over the final landing page.  It’s pretty much what we’d discussed except, wait….no…..say it ain’t so joe…….. yes:

the dreaded Captcha form.

Why would any company pay $20 or more a click in hopes of catching Mr. Big, or Mrs. Procurement Consultant, or Ms. Analytst, only to say “Not only are all fields required, but we hate you so much and we don’t want to be burdened by any possible spam submissions, that we’re going to make you try and figure out what the heck these two words are so you can type them in. ”

Love Thy Prospective Customer As Thyself.

Lessons Learned:

1) In today’s marketplace assuming your case study, webinar, whitepaper, etc is so good that people should register for it is a dangerous leap to begin with.  There’s way too much readily available information for the consumer to access.  Let’s not push it with this self-serving technology (who it’s serving I’m not quite sure but it sure isn’t the customer and it’s sure not anyone looking to capture leads).

2) Don’t let IT or your web developers scope your landing pages (or your website for that matter)!  Marketing and sales should always be in the process asking “is this how I’d want to be treated if I were in the visitor’s shoes”.

I’m done ranting, anyone got any takes on this?